abandonware games sorted by popularity

In 1986, Hacker arrived with a premise that felt thrillingly dangerous at the time: you, alone, tapping into secret computer systems and uncovering conspiracies. No explosions, no ...

Based on the cult fantasy novels by Roger Zelazny, 9 Princes in Amber is a 1985 text adventure that assumes two things: you’ve read the books, and you enjoy typing things lik...

Might and Magic 7: For Blood and Honor marks the series’ leap into full 3D exploration, and the result feels like stepping from a dusty library of spellbooks into a bustling ...

Before Virtua Tennis, there was this: 4D Sports Tennis, where physics and pixels politely shake hands and then forget why they were introduced. Released in 1990 for DOS, this game ...

This 1992 casino sim for DOS drops you into the neon-soaked carpet jungle of the Four Queens Hotel in Vegas. There’s no plot, no hero’s journey - just you, a digital ba...

Myst is a classic puzzle-adventure video game that was first released in 1993. It was developed by Cyan, a small independent game development studio. The game was initially release...

Heroes of the Lance takes the beloved fantasy setting and turns it into a side-scrolling adventure that is as ambitious as it is occasionally frustrating. Controlling a party of he...

Black Friday (1983) isn’t about shopping mayhem—though you might wish it were after trying to figure out what’s going on. This early DOS title is part stock marke...

If Hamlet had a sequel directed by a DOS programmer, Castle Elsinore would be it. This interactive fiction game drops you right into Shakespearean drama with murder, betrayal, and ...

ELIZA, created in the mid-1960s by Joseph Weizenbaum at MIT, was one of the first computer programs to simulate human conversation. Designed as a natural language processing demons...

Pyjamarama is an abandoned action adventure game released in 2004 for Windows; it's a remake of the original Pyjamarama. The original is a classic video game developed by Mikr...

Step into the shoes of a medieval lord in this 1991 DOS strategy game. Engage in jousting tournaments, siege castles, and vie for control of England. It's like playing Risk, but wi...

PGA Tour Golf is an abandoned golf game - the first in the PGA Tour series - designed by Lee Actor and Dennis Koble, developed by Sterling Silver Software and released by Electroni...

The 11th Hour is what happens when a puzzle game decides it also wants to haunt your dreams. As the sequel to The 7th Guest, it doubles down on eerie atmosphere, cryptic challenges...

Feudal Japan gets the wargame treatment in Conquest of Japan, a strategy title that mixes historical context with tactical ambition. You manage provinces, wage war, and occasionall...

For those who think snooker is too posh and billiards too French, there's Archer Maclean's Pool, the most ‘90s way to simulate the timeless art of arguing over whether that s...

Xiphos is a space shooter that mixes straightforward mechanics with a slightly more tactical approach, encouraging players to think as well as react. It is not overly complex, but ...